Jansen.

“Casteel, stop!” I shouted. He halted, his chest rising and falling with his heavy breaths as he leveled his sword at Jansen. Later, I would marvel over the fact that he had stopped without hesitation. Without question. I walked forward. “I made him a promise.”

“Thought you were sitting this one out,” Kieran stated as he kept pace with me.

“I am,” I told him. “But he’s different.”

Casteel stiffened at my words and shot forward so quickly that I thought he might deliver the fatal blow anyway. But he didn’t. He gripped the front of the silver mask and ripped it aside.

“Son of a bitch.” He tossed the mask to the floor.

Jansen’s eyes darted between Casteel and his father. “She will—”

“You need to shut the fuck up,” Casteel snarled as he stepped to the side.

I stalked forward, the stone cool under my bare feet as Kieran followed. As I passed Casteel, he pressed the hilt of his sword into my palm, and his bloodied lips touched my cheek.

“Poppy,” he said, and the sound of his voice punched a small hole in the wall I had built around my gifts. Everything he felt in the moment reached me. The hot acidity of rage, the refreshing, woodsy feeling of his relief, and the warmth of everything he felt for me. And given what he’d experienced before, the bitterness of fear and panic.

I shuddered as I stared at Jansen. “I’m okay.”

Casteel squeezed my hand that now held his sword. “None of this is okay.”

He was right.

It really wasn’t.

But I knew what would make it a little okay, right or wrong.

I pulled free from Casteel. “What did I promise you?” I asked Jansen.

The Royal Guard commander reached for his fallen sword, but I was faster, thrusting the sword out. Grunting, he staggered back, dropping to his knees. Glaring up at me, he folded his hands over the blade as if he could actually stop what was about to happen. “I told you that I’d be the one to kill you.” I slowly pushed the blade into his chest, smiling as I felt his bones break under the pressure of the sword as it met softer tissue. Blood bubbled out of the corner of his mouth. “I keep my promises.”

“As do I,” he rasped, the life fading from his eyes as his hands slipped from the blade, the skin of his palms and fingers torn open by the sharp edges.

As do I?

Without warning, something jerked me back with such force that fiery pain erupted in my chest. I lost my grip on the sword. The movement was so sudden, so intense, that I felt nothing for a moment as if I’d become detached from my body somehow. Time stopped for me, but people were still moving, and I saw a flash of Jasper as he leapt onto a Protector’s back, his teeth clamping down on the masked man’s throat. Something fell from the man’s hand. A bow…a crossbow.